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Editorials from around the country

Posted:
03/18/2013 01:00:00 AM MDT

Meet Venezuela's new political boss

Hugo Chavez was purportedly still in his death throes last week when his designated political heir, eager to snatch the reins of power before anyone could stop him, signaled that he was just as capable of playing the anti-American card as the dying president by summarily expelling two U.S. military attaches from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas.

The stated -- that they were conspiring against the Venezuelan government -- is nonsense. No evidence was put forward. But it conveniently served as a way for Vice President Nicolas Maduro to let Venezuelans know early on that (1) he was in charge and (2) he intends to follow in the late president's political footsteps.

All of this even before the body was cold. It was Maduro's way of reassuring supporters that he deserves to wear the mantle of Chavismo, the prevailing socialist ideology of the Venezuelan state fashioned by the late leader, and of keeping would-be rivals at bay.

If Maduro wants to show that he has nothing to fear in a free and fair election, he should invite international election observers to monitor the vote. Hugo Chavez scoffed at election observers, but Maduro should welcome their presence. It would be the best way to show that he's his own boss.

The Miami Herald

Partisan posturing, not

realistic solutions

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New budget proposals this week from influential members of the House Republican and Senate Democratic leadership are the stuff of political caricatures. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., last year's Republican nominee for vice president, reprised the spending-cut talking points from his failed campaign with little change and no apparent irony. Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., meanwhile, offered the outlines of a budget that increases taxes and spending, while doing little more than buying time on the entitlement programs at the heart of Washington's long-term problems. Neither approach offers a realistic way forward. Instead, they give Republicans and Democrats yet another arena in which to fight their ideological battles over the size and scope of government.

In short, the proposals play to the polarized extremes of each party. To Ryan, cutting spending is crucial to reviving the economy; to Murray, the key is pouring federal dollars into infrastructure projects and job training. Ryan's budget would simplify the tax code in order to cut tax rates; Murray's would do so to raise revenue by almost $1 trillion over the coming decade. If these ideas sound familiar, they should -- they were repeated ad infinitum during last year's campaign. At some point, lawmakers will have to step out of their ideological comfort zones and find a path they can walk together. That day can't come soon enough.

Los Angeles Times

A humble new leader

For many Roman Catholics in the United States, the Church of Rome is anything but. The paradox of a global religion is that its members can focus on as much or as little of it as they wish: its role in their nation, their metropolis, their neighborhood. Much as ancient Greeks believed the cosmos revolved around Earth, many of today's Catholics view their church in terms of themselves, their issues and their opinions.

On Wednesday, though, U.S. Catholics got a stark reminder that although 48 percent of their church's 1.2 billion members live in the Western Hemisphere, only one-fifth of those are North Americans. Some 425 million other Catholics live in Central America, the Caribbean or South America, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. One of them, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, is relocating to the Vatican under a newly assumed name: Pope Francis.

His elevation to the papacy matters for reasons that reach far beyond his vast and philosophically cleaved flock: traditionalists and modernists, free-thinkers and doctrinaire purists, all-in loyalists and "cafeteria Catholics" who select which teachings they believe and which rules they follow: In this nation and many others, Catholics and their institutions are the largest private providers of education, health care and charitable services. And whether the rest of us agree or disagree with its positions, the U.S. church is a rigorous voice on social issues - a voice of multimillennial values in a culture prone to preach that what's new is therefore good.

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